The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing cutting tools such as milling cutters, drills etc. which are provided with cutting plates having cutting edges with a coating of polycrystalline diamond, hard metals, ceramic materials or similar cutting materials wherein the cutting plates are, after their positioning on the cutting tool body, fixedly connected thereto by soldering. Known cutting tools, for example, milling cutters, are commonly manufactured such that in a cutting process cutting grooves and seats for the cutting plates as well as wings are produced on the cutting tool body of the milling tool whereby the grain flow of the crystal structure of the cutting tool body is at least partially substantially destroyed and notches are formed that will affect the tension compensation within the tool. Such a method is known from German Offenlegungsschrift 38 15 917. After the completion of the cutting process of the cutting tool body, the cutting plates are inserted into their plate seats and soldered to the cutting tool body. For this purpose, the individual plate seats are coated with a flux medium and then the first plate seat is locally heated to the soldering temperature and the soldering material is applied. Subsequently, the individual cutting plate is positioned within the seat, for example, with the aid of a pair of tweezers, and aligned. Parallel to this method step heat is applied in order to be able to perform the soldering process. After the first cutting plate has been correctly positioned and correctly soldering, the next cutting plate is soldered to the cutting tool body in the same manner. Due to the soldering of the next cutting plate the already attached cutting plate which has cooled off in the meantime is again heated by the heat of the second soldering step. In this manner all cutting plates are soldered to the cutting tool body one after another. When a certain temperature is surpassed, precipitation of graphite occurs at the cutting edge cover layer thereby destroying the polycrystalline diamond structure. Since this is already possible at a relatively low temperature, it is common practice to use only low temperature soldering materials that consequently do not result in a high soldering stability. It is especially disadvantageous that the cutting tool body and the cutting plates to be connected thereto are not subjected to a uniform and continuous heating and that the product quality resulting from the aforementioned steps depends greatly on the skills of the workmen. Accordingly, with the known methods uniform quality standards are hard to achieve because, on the one hand, the degree of coating of the soldering surfaces depends greatly on the force with which the cutting plates are pressed into the plate seats, and, on the other hand, soldering material must cover uniformly the entire seat and gas bubbles of the flux medium must be able to escape. Furthermore, the quality, the service life as well as the load capacity of the tool and of the cutting plates depends on the respective soldering temperature during the individual soldering process of the cutting plates to the cutting tool body.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method with which the aforementioned disadvantages can be avoided and which ensures that the cutting plates are exactly positioned on the base body of the tool, that all cutting plates are connected to the cutting tool body with the same high degree of fastness, and that this can also be ensured for a plurality of cutting tools manufactured within the same working cycle. It is furthermore an object of the present invention to provide a cutting tool that requires a reduced cutting expenditure for manufacture, provides improved seating and soldering and thus increased fastness.